Then we came home and inventoried kazmat's stockpile of Cheapass Games, so we'd know what to look for in our effort to complete her collection. This was not an insignificant amount of work. :-)

Next, the car. We drove down to Quincy to test-drive the Ford Escape Hybrid SUV, which was a cool thing even if it bothered me on all sorts of levels. (Not least of which: when it's moving at under 25 mph and running solely on the electric motor, it's so quiet that it triggers my "oh shit, it's stalling" panic reflex.) We spent a lot of time saying "Fnord Motor Company" and swiped all sorts of marketing materials for rhysara to use on her brats kids, including a significant influx of pencils for her pencil empire. (So what if they say "Ford" on them?)

Then on with the game-store crawl. Expedition Record, Part the Second:

• Fifth game store: Games People Play, Cambridge. rhysara – Tin Soldiers, a d30 labelled with letters instead of numbers, and a d6 labelled with fractions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/3, 1/5, 1/6). Me – a very special Cheapass Game for a very special gamer. (Er, or kazmat if you're playing along with the home game.)

• Seventh game store: The Hobby Bunker, Malden. Except they were closed, so no browsing and no buying. Sad.

Then dinner, then a stop at Krispy Kreme so I could be introduced to the wonderful thing that is the "waterfall" of glaze (insert your own Homer Simpson drooling noise here), then home to examine our loot. Loot! W00t!

Comments:

Starbase Jeff at gamestore #2 was actually supposed to be for kazmat as I swore she didn't have it. However our mid-day inventory of her cheap-ass game stash reveals that I was wrong.

In combination with the free-swag compass that I got this afternoon, I think the directional!die will be brilliant. Sort of a choose your own adventure game!

Also I think it is very important that we invent a game that involves the direction!die, the alphabet!die and the fraction!die. "Go south east for 1/3 of a block, go into whatever store you find there and buy something that starts with the letter 'U'."

btw, /me demands a proper run down of each of the game stores... demands I say!

And I'd already found Celtic Warrior 300 BC–AD 100 (Warrior 30) last week at one of the stores down around Mattapoisett. I know the Dragon Pass Orlanthi (and Sartarites in particular) are closer to being Anglo-Saxons than Celts, but check out the guy on the cover and tell me he's not at least a relative of Feirgus. :-)

Osprey books are really far too expensive ($16.95), but at the present exchange rate, it's actually cheaper for me to buy them here in the USA than in Britain, where they're published. (The UK price is £10.99, which is $19.61 US. Not a lot of financial incentive there.)

I'm pleased to see that in addition to the ever-reliable Angus McBride (who did the cover art for the old Middle-Earth Role-Playing game supplements), they've hired Wayne Reynolds (aka "WAR", probably my favourite of the artists working for WotC on D&D v3.x) to illustrate some of the newer books, including Celtic Warrior, Pictish Warrior and Mongol Warrior from my recent batch. It's interesting to see WAR doing strict-historical art, without all the fantasy trappings. (Though yes, there are still an awful lot of people shown in battle-grimaces with their mouths open really, really wide, so it still looks like his stuff.)

Just remember...

When procuring a hybrid, Lease Lease Lease!All hybrids estimate a ~3 year battery life. Batteries cost, on average, for full replacement, $3000.Yes, that's three THOUSAND Dollars. Three year lease. Then turn it in for a new one. This is information the dealers DO NOT volunteer.